How to Reduce size of PDF exported from Quark 1

[imnotcourtney]

Hi - I have a 24 page document in Quark 6.5 that is 18.8 MBS. Even when I apply compression tools, the PDF is over 30 MBs. Is there a way in Quark to reduce this? I really need it to be under 10 MBs (at most).

Mac OSX 10.3.9

Many thanks

 

[jimoblak]

In addition to addressing image compression, you need to look at reducing image resolution.

 

[imnotcourtney]

Well of course I do! And thanks

 

[jmgalvin]

If you have Acrobat pro, try opening the pdf and go to File menu/Reduce file Size.

That gets rid of a lot of redundancy in the code etc and can reduce the size remarkably without losing quality.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[imnotcourtney]

Thanks jmg - but I don't have Pro - just the free reader. Must get around tuit some day.

 

[jmgalvin]

Yeah it really helps. I had a 15MB yesterday (from a 77 MB PSD).

Reduce File size made it 300KB

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[imnotcourtney]

Sweet! Looks like I'll be checking into that.

 

[Matzki]

Printing postscript files then generating PDF with Acrobat Distiller will reduce your file size by 3x or more. I was generating press quality PDFs through Quark and getting 30 MB files (for example), and now they are around 1.5 MB. Full version of Acrobat is a solid investment for sure!

 

[jimoblak]

Cut out the effort if you use Acrobat. There is no need to print to PostScript first and then distill with Acrobat. Just 'print' a PDF file.

Acrobat installs a virtual printer that you just print to to make the PDF file. The PDF generator from Adobe (the inventor of PDF) is always going to be better than Quark's JAWS implementation.

 

[Matzki]

Just 'print' a PDF does work better than export as PDF, but not if you need custom page sizes. If anyone knows a fix for that I'd love to hear it.

 

[jimoblak]

You apparently are not digging deeply enough into the print options for your virtual PDF printer. It's in there.

 

[Matzki]

Thanks for pushing me to look harder. Page Setup>Paper size>Manage Custom Sizes. Although this method requires one more step in the process, I feel it generates a 'cleaner' PDF faster and I will now adopt this method. Cheers!

 

[jmgalvin]

Matzki:

Just be cognizant of one thing. The Print PDF via Acrobat is reliant on the PDF Options in the Print menu - after selecting Adobe PDF as the printer - for the output quality.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4